I love taking RAW photos with my Olympus PEN and processing them with Capture One Pro. Like many people, however, my ever present pocket camera is my iPhone, and there are countless photo processing and editing apps available. I've settled on a handful of apps that I use, with the goal of being to get great results in a minimal amount of time, while still being in control of the process (no one-button filters for me).

With the exception of Photosynth, I always take photos with the default iOS camera app. It seems to start up faster than other apps, and I love that I can access it from the phone's lock screen.

Go-To Apps

The two go-to processing apps I use are CameraKit and Big Lens.

CameraKit

I've been using Camera Kit since back when I had an iPhone 3G. The app is still maintained by its developer, and while it isn't the fastest or most fully-featured app, it still has a great vintage film style that is unlike anything else out there.

Big Lens

I really love Big Lens. Its main purpose is to let you add depth-of-field blur to an image, and it does a superb job of it. A number of apps, like Instagram, let you add a pseudo tilt-shift blur, but Big Lens actually simulates a wide aperture. Importantly, it also includes a number of great-looking color correction filters, particularly the Lomo-style filters. Together, the DoP and filters give iPhone pictures a pretty believable DSLR look.

Other Great Apps

I use a few other apps for a variety of special purposes.

Cortex Cam

Cortex Cam is a great "long exposure" app that let's you take nice-looking low-light photos without grainy high ISO noise. I use it a lot to take photos of wine bottles at night that I upload to Delectable.

Dynamic Light

I rarely try to create fake HDR, but when I do, I use Dynamic Light. Like most HDR post-processors, it can overdo the effect, but sometimes that can make a boring shot more fun. Dynamic Light also has a number of other filters and effects, but I never use them.

Photosynth

iOS 7 includes a basic panorama photo mode, but Photosynth is a lot more powerful. With more practice and patience, I hope to make some Widelux-style pictures (a la Jeff Bridges). I sometimes like to process exported Photosynth pictures via Dynamic Light.

Snapseed

Snapseed is definitely my favorite general purpose photo editor. Once you get accustomed to the user interface, you can make a lot of power edits and corrections very quickly. I mostly use Snapseed with photos that I import from my Olympus PEN via an Eye-Fi card. It almost seems specialized for that purpose.

Sharing

I tried using Apple's Photostream for sharing, but found it really difficult to use, and often unreliable. And of course, only Apple users can see the pictures.

Instagram

So I post my processed iPhone photos to Instagram. I used to cross-post them to Flickr, but I've decided to use Flickr primarily for my Olympus PEN photos or for albums to share with families. Instagram has always had some decent filters, and the latest has some serviceable editing tools, but since I process everything in other apps, I almost never use an Instagram filter. I do wish Instagram supported non-square photos, especially for panoramas.

PhotoSync

When I want to send my photos to someplace other than Instagram, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, I upload them via PhotoSync. PhotoSync is the Swiss Army Knife of photo-uploading apps. If you want to send a picture somewhere, PhotoSync can do it.

tag:mikeyp.com,2013:/mac/checkingitunesremoteChecking iTunes Remote2013-02-20T05:36:00Z2013-02-20T05:36:00ZMikeyPhttp://www.mikeyp.com/weblog
<p><img style="border: 0px currentcolor; float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" title="itunes_image2" border="0" alt="itunes_image2" align="left" src="http://www.mikeyp.com/blogmedia/Windows-Live-Writer/6df709f977a0_129D0/itunes_image2_3.png" width="240" height="240">I have an Apple Airport Express unit attached my stereo system, and I use the iTunes Remote app on my iPad to play music that is stored in iTunes on a <a href="http://www.mikeyp.com/weblog/mac/fromlinuxtomac.html">Mac mini</a>. This usually works great, but I noticed a problem after cleaning up my music library: some albums would not play all of their tracks in sequence.</p><p>Usually, when you tap the first track of an album in the iTunes Remote app, all of the songs on that album will be queued and will play in order. But several albums in my library would only play the first track, then stop. I could tap to start the second track, but then the third track would not play.</p><p><a href="http://www.mikeyp.com/blogmedia/Windows-Live-Writer/6df709f977a0_129D0/itunes-remote_2.png"><img style="display: inline; background-image: none;" title="itunes-remote" border="0" alt="iTunes Remote on iPad" src="http://www.mikeyp.com/blogmedia/Windows-Live-Writer/6df709f977a0_129D0/itunes-remote_thumb_1.png" width="454" height="604"></a></p><p>After A/B testing different settings in two different iTunes libraries, I discovered the problem. Every track in the iTunes library has a "checkbox" next to it that you can see in the song list view. Normally, that checkbox is used to indicate songs that can be synced to an iPod/iPhone. But if the songs are unchecked, they are also <em>not queued by default </em>when played via iTunes Remote.</p><p><a href="http://www.mikeyp.com/blogmedia/Windows-Live-Writer/6df709f977a0_129D0/itunes-checkboxes_2.png"><img style="display: inline; background-image: none;" title="itunes-checkboxes" border="0" alt="Checkboxes in iTunes" src="http://www.mikeyp.com/blogmedia/Windows-Live-Writer/6df709f977a0_129D0/itunes-checkboxes_thumb.png" width="579" height="372"></a></p><p>After setting the checkbox on all of the songs in my library, every album now plays sequential tracks as expected. I'm not sure why some albums were unchecked by default, and I have yet to find any Apple documentation on this feature. So this will be something I watch as I add new music.</p>
tag:mikeyp.com,2010:/guitar/polishingfretsonahowardrobertsPolishing Frets on a Howard Roberts2010-09-20T06:02:00Z2010-09-20T06:02:00ZMikeyPhttp://www.mikeyp.com/weblog

I hit upon a lucky eBay find, and managed to acquire a mid-1990's Korean-made Epiphone Howard Roberts for a great price. It's a terrific jazz box, and is really fun to play.

As with many older guitars, the frets were tarnished and dull, so I decided to polish them using the Dremel technique from the Project Guitar.com site. I wrote about this technique before, so rather than rehash the instructions, here are some pictures of the process and results.

I built a custom Tansu-style TV stand for my Pioneer Kuro plasma and PMC LB1 center channel speaker. The speaker is so large I had almost no choice but to make a custom stand. I also used this as an opportunity to teach myself some woodworking skills.

This is not a real Tansu, and I'm sure a real Tansu creator would cringe at the design and (lack of) craftsmanship. Up close, you can see a ton of mistakes I made (poor cuts, plywood tear-out, glue squeeze-out, etc), but at the casual TV viewing distance, I can live with it. For now.

The whole stand is made from a single sheet of cheap birch plywood, the "macaroni and cheese of woodworking." It's finished with four coats of Tung Oil, but the birch isn't that pretty, so I'll likely make it darker at some point.

Side note: AOL shut down their member homepages a couple of years ago. So where can I find the invaluable "Allan's Wood Miser's Workshop" site now besides on archive.org?

Soon after buying my Breedlove acoustic guitar, I decided to buy a clip-on tuner. There are many clip-on tuners available at all price ranges, and they all basically work the same way. They pick up the vibration of the strings through the guitar body and neck, and display the current pitch in a way that shows you the current tuning.

I opted for a cheap tuner, the Intelli IMT500 . While it worked reasonably well, I noticed that the display would occasionally swing wildly to inaccurate values.

I also noticed that I could hear a slight buzzing sound when playing some notes on the guitar. At first I assumed this was an intonation issue, but after setting up the guitar and trying several types of strings, I ruled out intonation as a cause. Then it hit me: I removed the clip-on tuner, and the buzzing stopped.

If I shook the tuner a little in my hand, I could hear a slight rattling from inside the device. It struck me that this was the cause of the buzzing while I played. And I realized that this must also affect the accuracy of the tuner. If the tuner relies on vibrations to show the pitch, extra vibrations from the device itself would explain the wild swings I saw on the display.

This was easy to fix.

The tuner is held together with just two screws, and inside, the small circuit board is held in place with two more screws. There is some “play” where the edge of the board touches the housing, and that’s what causes the buzzing and extra vibrations. I grabbed a small bit of foam and cut it into bits that I wedged in between the circuit board and the housing. I reassembled the tuner, and that was that – no more buzzing, and much better tuning accuracy.

tag:mikeyp.com,2010:/diyhousehold/dustcontrolinthegarageworkshopDust Control in the Garage Workshop2010-08-01T03:24:00Z2010-08-01T03:24:00ZMikeyPhttp://www.mikeyp.com/weblog

After years of sweeping and dusting and dozens of disposable air filter masks, I’m finally taking dust control seriously in my garage workshop.

Dust control starts at the tool with a vacuum system, but it ends in the air. No matter how well I gathered chips and dust while working on a piece of wood, I would inevitably find a film of dust on everything in the garage by the end of the day.

No more.

I bought and installed a Jet Air Filtration System in the garage, and my days of pervasive dust are history. There are several air filter systems available. I picked the Jet because of a good review in Fine Woodworking and a good price plus “free” Prime shipping on Amazon.com.

You simply turn it on via a remote control, set the speed, set the number of hours it should run, and forget about it. It works like a home furnace, with a reasonably quiet impeller that cycles air through two sets of filters. The results are quickly noticeable.

$300 is cheap insurance against emphysema and lung cancer, eh?

(Why yes, I did in fact mount this sucker to the ceiling joists all by myself. Not recommended…)

For the past five years I’ve been using Etymotic ER6i Isolator earphones. I’ve used them with my original 2nd gen iPod, my iPod nano, and now my iPhone 3G. Unlike the standard Apple earbuds, the Etys are in-ear earphones, which means that they also act as earplugs, isolating outside noise (like terrible coffee shop music). In fact, the tighter the outside noise isolation, the better the fidelity and bass response of the Etys. I love these things.

Etymotic has a long history of making high-end earphones as well as superior hearing protection. I bring a pair of Etymotic ER-20 earplugs with me to every concert, and I end up using them about half the time. They do an outstanding job of lowering volumes by about 15db without any of the muffling effect you get from regular foam earplugs. Wearing them is a great way to enjoy a concert and avoid damaging your hearing or aggravating evil tinnitus.

Both the earplugs and ER6i earphones use a triple flanged eartip to isolate noise. However, ear canal shapes vary widely among people, so Etymotic offers several eartip options. In my case, I found that the beige foam eartips did the best job of isolating sound by expanding to the shape of my ear canal. Compared to the flange eartip, I hear much deeper bass with the foam eartips installed.

I hope my Etys last another five years. And if they don’t, I’ll buy another set in an instant.

tag:mikeyp.com,2010:/general/raisingtheaeronRaising the Aeron2010-01-04T02:03:00Z2010-01-04T02:03:00ZMikeyPhttp://www.mikeyp.com/weblog

Almost every high-tech startup in the Bay Area outfits their office with Herman Miller Aeron chairs. And as some of the startups inevitably go out of business, the Aeron chairs hit the surplus office supply market, where people like me pick them up at a big discount.

After bringing home my discounted Aeron chair, I noticed that the center post tended to drag against the carpet. The standard casters on Aeron chairs are designed for office carpets and solid floors, and don’t lift the chair high enough to allow the center post to clear a normal home carpet.

You can buy a larger set of Aeron casters from various sources, but they usually sell for at least $50 or more . To me, that’s pretty expensive for a simple set of casters.

Installation was simple. I turned the chair over, popped off the old casters and popped on the new large ones. The new casters raise the chair by about 3/4 inch, which is plenty of clearance for the center post over the carpet.

I used a Boss BF-2 flanger pedal for years. It’s a great pedal, especially if you can find one of the older Japanese-made models. But it could never really do that over-the-top sound from Van Halen’s Unchained. Eddie used an older MXR flanger pedal on that classic riff, and Dunlop/MXR now have an “EVH”-branded flanger that can do that sound at the push of a button: EVH Flanger Pedal

This is one heck of a flanger pedal. It’s rock solid, heavy, and has a heavy duty full bypass footswitch. It also requires a lot of power, either using two 9-volt batteries or the included 18v wall wart.

If you want the Van Halen Unchained sound, you can press a special EVH button to bypass the settings and go straight to the classic TIE-fighter swoosh effect. For the best results, you’ll want this pedal near the front of your signal chain, with a high-output humbucker on the guitar and distortion cranked on the amp.

But the pedal can do a lot more than just the Van Halen effect. The four tuning knobs let this pedal make tons of great sounds. In fact, I was in search of a good Leslie or Rotoverb pedal to get that early Charlie Hunter guitar/organ sound, when I realized that I could get an excellent version of that effect just by tuning the EVH flanger. Set the following knobs to get a decent H&K Rotosphere sound: